1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for recognizing an image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Nowadays, an electronic device, particularly, a portable electronic device has been developed to have various functions to meet user's desires. For example, a mobile communication terminal provides functions far beyond voice communication, and, for example, allows a user to listen to various music using an MP3 sound source into basic communication functions such as texting with a counterpart user, and also allows the user to enjoy web surfing using a wireless Internet, download various programs using the wireless Internet, and use the same. Also, the mobile communication terminal has at least one mega-pixel image pick-up device (camera lens assembly) to allow the user to capture the image of a desired specific object. More recently, portable terminals permit both recording and viewing a moving picture as well as a still image, more particularly, 3-dimensional image photographing function is generally distributed.
Recently, as a ubiquitous environment is being created for the electronic devices such as mobile communication terminals, a technology that can recognize a photo (image) of a specific object is widely developed. More particularly, among these object recognitions, face recognition is now being applied as one field of a plurality of living body recognitions. Face recognition by the electronic device denotes an operation for recognizing facial features by analyzing a symmetrical structure, an appearance of a face, hair, eye color, movement of a facial muscle, etc. Applications of face recognition can vary to a large degree.
For example, the face recognition may be used for identification purposes in order to replace a passport, a credit card, etc., and may be used for security purposes such as time and attendance management, gate pass, password replacement, etc. Also, face recognition may be utilized for public safety purposes such as a suspected criminal search, crime-ridden district monitoring, etc. Furthermore, face recognition is applied even to a smart phone application for amusement that can find a similar figure resembling a user himself. Therefore, the face recognition function is convenient in that a user does not need to remember or possess a something separately, such as a credit card or identification card, or card key, or some type of access code. Face recognition may also comprise only recognition of a portion of a person's face.
However, an electronic device in general typically captures the image of a face in a two-dimensional image and performs face recognition using the captured image. The captured image is not a real face but a face identified in the picture/moving picture, but the face recognition is applied to the captured image. This aspect of face recognition causes vulnerability for security purposes.
For example, in the case where a user encrypts and uses recognition information regarding a specific face as an object, the user may decipher a code by only capturing a picture of a relevant person, not a face that is being actually photographed. In other words, conventional face recognition systems are vulnerable to someone positioning, for example, a high-definition image of somebody else in front of a camera to fool the system into providing access to bank records, to make credit purchases, or whatever systems are using face recognition rather than passwords, identification cards, etc.